Tofu and green onion miso soup

Ok...I know I started my first miso soup recipe by calling it "Not just tofu and green onions in my miso soup please" but I figured at one time or another I'd get someone asking why I don't have the quintessential miso soup on my blog so here it is. I also thought what better time than the grilled fish build a meal to introduce this classic miso soup recipe.

Ingredients (servings 2)
1/8 a 14 oz. (396 grams) package of tofu (cut into 8 cubes)
1 green onion
2 Tablespoons +1 teaspoon of miso
2 cups nibandashi

1) Make nibandashi or you can use ichibandashi. As a substitute you can use 2 cups of water and 1/4 teaspoon of dashi powder.
2) Add the tofu and simmer for 1 minute.
3) Add the miso and put the miso in a ladle and use chop sticks or something to dissolve the miso before adding it directly to the soup.
4) Add the green onions and serve immediately.

Put the green onions in just before serving.


Don't cut your tofu into tiny specs.

Saba no Shioyaki (Mackerel)

It's about time I posted something on grilled fish. This Build a Meal is probably the most typical Japanese meal thus far. This meal is something that could be served as breakfast, lunch or dinner. You don't necessarily have to use saba (mackerel) but I chose it because it's one of my favorite grilled fishes and there aren't as many bones as some other popular grilled fish like Sanma (Mackerel Pike/Pacific Saury)

There are a few ways you can grill your fish. The best of course would be to grill your fish on a stick over some hot coals near a river and then drizzle some soy sauce over it. Mmmmm I probably saw that on some soy sauce commercial. But realistically, you're probably only going to have a stove, oven, or toaster oven to work with. Japanese stoves usually have a nifty built in fish grilling pan that give the fish a nice charred color. If you're anywhere but Japan, you're more than likely not going to have one so I came up with a method using a toaster oven. If you don't have a toaster oven and you have a broil setting on your oven you might want to try that, but I figure it's kinda a lot of energy to waste heating up an entire oven for two little pieces of fish.

The second method I use to grill my fish is on a frying pan. Fish skin is delicate and usually tears easily so I like to use a small piece of parchment paper and line the frying pan first. If you use this method, fry the skin side down first for about 3-5 minutes on med-low heat and flip and fry for about 3 minutes on the other side.

Ingredients (Servings 2)
1-2 teaspoon(s) of salt
2 pieces of mackerel
vegetable oil
2-3 tablepoons of daikon oroshi. Also see Daikon.
Splash of soy sauce or yuzu ponzu.

1) Prepping your fish: Wash your fish with water and pat dry. Salt the fish on both sides and put back into the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. This helps to get rid of some of the fishiness since mackerel tends to be on the fishy side. If you're sensitive to the fishy smell you can also sprinkle with some sake along with the salt and let it sit longer than 30 minutes.
2) Use the crumb tray that your toaster oven comes with and fill it with water. This helps to keep the fish from drying out.
3) Lay the rack on top and coat it with vegetable oil.
4) Lay your fish diagonally on the racks with the skin side up.
5) Set your toaster oven on broil and cook on the lower rack for 7 minutes.
6) Transfer to the higher rack and cook for an additional 4-5 minutes until the skin starts to bubble and char.
7) Leave the fish on the higher rack and flip them and cook for an additional 4 minutes.
8) Serve with daikon oroshi on the side and add a splash of soy sauce or yuzu ponzu to it. Garnish with a lemon wedge or lemon slice.

Wash your saba and pat it dry. Rub salt on both sides and refrigerate for 30 minutes.


Fill the crumb tray with water and coat the rack with vegetable oil.


Lay the fish on the rack skin side up.


Start it out on the lower rack.


The fish should look like this after moving it up to the higher rack and cooking for an additional 4-5 minutes.


Flip the fish and cook for 4 more minutes.


Saba no shioyaki served!

Fancy Sushi Tsukemono

Wow it's already BAM 7! Lucky SEVEN! This is probably the most Japanese BAM so far. I'm introducing the first grilled fish, of course the most popular miso soup (tofu and green onions), a fun sushi tsukemono and rice.



Ingredients
3 large hakusai leaves (or 6 small ones)
1 small carrot
1 Japanese cucumber (you can substitute with English cucumbers but they should be peeled and seeded)
6 shiso leaves
2.5 inches of the top of a daikon (Use half of it)
(You should have about 4 cups of cut up vegetables.)
2 tsp. of salt
1/2 teaspoon of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of grated ginger

1) Boil some water in a large pot and add the hakusai leaves. Boil for about 3 minutes. Drain and put in a bowl of cold water.
2) Wash and cut your vegetables. Cut them into thin match sticks. Cut the carrots and cucumber in diagonal slices first. Next, line them up nicely and slice them into thin match sticks.
3) Cut the daikon into slices length wise and then cut them into match stick the same size as the carrots and the cucumber.
4) Put the vegetables in a bowl and add the salt and sugar and mix with your hands. Set aside for 5 minutes.
5) Mix the veggies again and squeeze out as much water out as you can. Mix in the grated ginger.
6) Use a sushi roller and lay a piece of plastic wrap on it.
7) Gently squeeze out the water from the hakusai and lay them on top of the sushi roller and plastic wrap. (If you have large hakusai leaves, then you'll only need one but if you only have small hakusai leaves use 2 so that they are slightly overlapping.
8) Put a third of vegetable mix on the hakusai like you're making a sushi roll.
9) Roll the hakusai and leave it wrapped in the plastic and refrigerate for 30 minutes to an hour.
10) Cut in 5-6 even pieces.

How to cut your cucumbers.




Use your hand and push down on them and keep the cucumbers in place.


This is what they should look like.


Do the same thing with the carrots.




Cut the daikon like this and then cut into strips.


Add the sugar and salt the the vegetables, mix and set aside.


Simmer all of the hakusai for about three minutes.


Drain and put in a bowl of cold water.


Gently squeeze out the water from the hakusai.


Squeeze out the water from the vegetables.


Use both hands.


The vegetables should be limp.


Mix in the ginger.


Set up your sushi roller and lay a piece of plastic wrap over it.


Lay your hakusai on top and 2 shiso leaves.


Lay a third of the veggies on top.


Start rolling. Stop and squeeze tight.


Squeeze it tight.


Put on a plate and refrigerate.


Cut into 5-6 even pieces.


Serve and dip into a little bit of soy sauce and eat with a hot bowl of rice.


If you have any left over in the fridge, you may want to squeeze some of the water out before cutting.

Enoki Miso Soup

This is the conclusion recipe for BAM 6.

Enoki miso soup is wonderfully simple and another miso soup to add to your repertoire. The enoki give the soup a natural sweetness that you wouldn't expect from a mushroom.

Ingredients:
(servings 2)
Half of a bag of enoki mushroom.
1 green onion
2 Tablespoons +1 teaspoon of miso
2 cups nibandashi

1) Make nibandashi or you can use ichibandashi. As a substitute you can use 2 cups of water and 1/4 teaspoon of dashi powder.
2) Add the miso and put the miso in a ladle and use chop sticks or something to dissolve the miso before adding it directly to the soup.
3) Add the enoki and simmer for 1 minute.
4) Add the green onions and serve immediately.

Add the enoki and simmer for 1 minute.


Served and ready to eat.

Ingredient in the Spotlight: Enoki

Enoki is such an elegant mushroom. It's tall, skinny and has cute little mushroom caps. It was my favorite food as a kid. I was kinda a weird kid. I mean, who chooses to eat enoki over chocolate as a kid.

The great thing about enoki is that it's easy to prepare since you don't have to wash it much and it cooks fast. I wouldn't recommend eating it raw but you don't want to over cook it.

This website has a lot of good information about enoki mushrooms.
Golden Gourmet

You want to cut off the roots but leave enough that they are still stuck together. You can pull them apart but keep clusters together for soups.

Hakusai (Chinese Cabbage/Nappa) Stir Fry with Age (fried Tofu)

Hakkusai no yasai itame (stir fried hakusai).

Ingredients
1 small hakusai (5-6 cups of chopped hakusai)
half of a medium onion sliced into strips
2 age sliced into strips
1 carrot sliced thin
1/4 cup of dashijiru
3/4 tablespoon of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of Mirin
1 teaspoon of vegetable oil

1) Wash and chop vegetables (see photos below)
2) Boil a small pot of water and boil age for 1-2 minutes. (2 minutes if you're using frozen age)
3) Drain age, rinse and squeeze some of the water out.
4) Slice age into strips.
5) In a large frying pan/Wok or a large pot, add oil and onions. Stir fry until soft.
6) Add carrots, age and hakusai.
7) Add the dashijiru, soy sauce, and mirin immediately after.
8) Cover and simmer for about 2 minutes and then stir fry until the hakusai is cooked through.

Ingredient in the Spotlight: Hakusai (Chinese Cabbage)

Hakusai is also know as napa cabbage or Chinese cabbage. The kanji for hasusai is white and vegetable. This is because the meaty part of the leaf is mostly white. It has a nice crunchy and refreshing light taste that goes with almost anything. In Japanese cuisine, it's commonly used in nabe (hot pot) dishes, tsukemono (pickles) or in stir frys.

It was introduced to Japan after the Meiji Period (1868-1912) and mostly during the Showa Period (1926-1989). It became popular very quickly and by 1941 over 500,000 tons of hakusai was produced. Production peeked in 1968 at 1,680,000 tons. Production decreased significantly with the introduction of Western food, however it continues to be very popular coming in third after daikon and cabbage.

Hakusai contains vitamin C, calcium, iron and carotene.

Hakusai comes in many varieties and sizes.

BAM 6: Niku Gohan (Meat Rice), enoki miso soup and Hakusai/Nappa (cabbage) stir fry.

Are ya ready for meat rice? If this meat rice doesn't knock your socks off I don't know what will. This is another one of my grandmother's famous maze gohan (mixed rice) recipes.

It's a sweet and savory combination of thin slices of meat, caramelized onions, gobo cooked in a sweet soy sauce and mixed together with rice. I have such an urge to say "YUM-O" (watching too much Rachael Ray) but I'm gonna fight it.

Although there aren't a lot of ingredients in this dish, it does take some time to prepare. This might be something you can prepare on Sunday and have leftovers on Monday, maybe Tuesday and...

Ingredients for the Gobo Mix
2.5 cups of shredded gobo
1 teaspoon of sesame seed oil
1(1/2) cup of dashijiru or water and 1/4 tsp. of dashi powder.
3 tablespoons of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of mirin
1 tablespoon of sugar

Ingredients for the meat
0.8 lbs (380 grams) of thinly sliced sukiyaki style meat or komagiri style meat.*
1.5 cups of dashijiru or water and 1/2 teaspoon of dashi powder.
1 onion sliced thinly
1/8 teaspoon of nutmeg
1 clove of garlic minced
4 tablespoons of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of mirin
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon of sugar

4 cups of rice washed.

1) Wash the rice and fill the water up until it's just below the four in the rice cooker.
2) Wash the gobo and peel the skin using the back of your knife. (be careful not to touch your clothes after you handle gobo because it will stain your clothes)
3) Fill a large mixing bowl with water and add a teaspoon of vinegar to it. This is for aku nuki.
4) Use a sharp knife or vegetable peeler and cut/peel half an inch to an inch long pieces of gobo into the vinegar water. Turn the gobo and shave off pieces of gobo as if you're sharpening a pencil. They should end up looking like wood shavings.
5) Cut your onions and mince the garlic.
6) Heat two frying pans.
7) Drain the gobo and add 1 teaspoon of the sesame seed oil to one of the hot pan and add the gobo. Stir fry for about 1-2 minutes stirring constantly with a wooden spoon.
8) In the other pan, add 1 teaspoon of vegetable oil and add the garlic and onions. Cook until the onions have caramelized.
9) Add the dashijiru, soy sauce, mirin and sugar to the gobo and simmer for 10-15 minutes.
10) In the garlic/Onion pan, add the meat and nutmeg and stir fry until it's half cooked.
11) Add dashijiru, soy sauce, mirin and sugar to the meat pan and simmer until the pink is gone. Turn the heat off immediately.
12) Ladle out half of the sauce from the meat and put it in the gobo pan. The gobo will have simmered down and have less sauce. Stir that around and continue to simmer the gobo for a few more minutes. The gobo should be cooked soft and about the same consistency as the rice. This is why you cook the meat (which cooks fast) and the gobo separately but you want the gobo to have a chance to absorb some of the delicious meat flavor.
13) One the gobo is done, you can combine everything back into one pan and allow all the flavors to marry. Don't simmer any longer.
14) When the rice switch goes off, allow the rice to steam in the rice cooker for about 5 minutes. Add the meat and gobo mix but only add about 1/4 cup of the sauce into the rice and don't mix. Allow everything to steam for an additional 10 minutes.
15) After 10 minutes, mix well and make sure everyhing is incorporated.

*Komagiri style meat is also thinly sliced but they are the scraps of thinly sliced pieces of meat.

Gobo shavings using a knife. You can use a vegetable peeler but you end up with a better thickness if you use a knife.




They should look like wood shavings.


The perfect piece.


Komagiri style meat comes packaged like this.


Stir fry gobo with vegetable oil.


Stir fry onions and garlic in another pan.


Add the gobo sauce ingredients and simmer.


Add the meat and nutmeg. This is how thin the meat is.


Add the meat sauce ingredients and cook until you don't see anymore pink and turn off heat immediately.


The sauce should simmer down but don't let all of it burn off.


Ladle in sauce from the meat pan.


Add some of the gobo sauce into the meat pan.


After the gobo is done, combine the gobo and meat and let the flavors marry. Leave the heat off.


Use tongs and put the meat and gobo mix into the rice cooker with 1/4 cup of sauce and allow it to steam for 10 minutes.


Mix well until all ingredients are incorporated.


Serve a nice heaping of rice into a big bowl.


Serve with vegetables and miso soup.